The F1 2026 season has seen a huge shake-up in the regulations, and some have already felt the benefit of new machinery to go with it.

Some have felt it more than others, but it’s time to see who has seen an immediate improvement in their competitiveness this season.

PlanetF1.com’s F1 2026 most improved drivers so far

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Kimi Antonelli

We can be honest here in saying that, in our pre-season predictions, it was a clean sweep for George Russell among the PF1 team in terms of who would come out on top at Mercedes in 2026.

In our defence, you can see why. It’s only Antonelli’s second season in Formula 1, he had a rocky spell mid-season in 2025, he’s still a teenager – everything tracked for momentum being in Russell’s favour, particularly a driver of his calibre.

Well, all of those assumptions were doing Antonelli quite the disservice, it would seem.

Antonelli spoke of his own title chances at the start of the season, often alongside Russell at Mercedes press conferences, which didn’t really garner much attention or coverage at the time – such was the level of expectation around the Briton heading into this year.

However, the Italian has ticked off a fair few major firsts this year: pole, race win (which then became five in a row, no less), a first grand chelem of pole, fastest lap, leading every lap and a race victory (at Monaco, no less), and simply looking the more comfortable Mercedes driver for much of the year.

Now, he has not been perfect by any means – race starts remain a troublesome issue for him, for example – but the level of improvement from his first to second season feels almost unprecedented.

He’s now heavy favourite to become the first sophomore world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. Now, the test of his mettle and consistency arrives.

Lewis Hamilton

At the other end of the scale, putting a seven-time world champion in a ‘most improved’ piece is anything but reductive of his skills, rather a reflection on where things were a year ago.

Let’s not forget that, in Hungary last season, Hamilton called himself “absolutely useless” and that Ferrari “should probably change driver.”

Now, that’s anything but the topic of conversation.

That first win in red in Barcelona was clearly emotional for him on a number of levels, not least it was proof that, after the never-quite-mastering of the ground effect era, Hamilton was back in his natural territory in Formula 1. He’s still finished more races on the podium than off it, after all.

The line, too, of Hamilton recalling a fan telling him to “remember who you are” felt particularly poignant, as it seems to have resonated not just with him, but the wider fanbase as a whole.

Now more comfortable having established himself within Ferrari, in a car more suited to his driving style, we have seen the best of Hamilton once again.

His place behind Antonelli in the championship is no accident – he’s yet to finish outside the top six all season, had five podiums along the way and, with several penalties coming his way in recent races, he could argue he should have further points still.

Don’t write him off just yet.

Franco Colapinto

With Alpine having had a rough run in 2025, Franco Colapinto being catapulted into a new seat for the second time mid-season will not have been the easiest introduction.

It’s safe to say he struggled to get to grips with being an Alpine driver last season. He rarely matched Pierre Gasly for pace, he scored none of the team’s 22 points, and talk of him losing his seat towards the end of 2025 gathered pace before it was confirmed he would be staying on in 2026.

In short, this has proven the correct decision.

With a full run-up of pre-season for the first time in his Formula 1 career, Colapinto has seen the benefits of getting to grips with a car throughout its process, driving it in the simulator before it goes on track and knowing what to expect when a new season rolls around.

Simply, having the preparation he needed has allowed Colapinto to show more of what he is capable of doing behind the wheel.

While he’s still behind Gasly on pretty much every metric (43-19 in points, 7-4 in race head-to-heads and 8-3 in qualifying), he is close enough often enough that he has proven a solid pick alongside the experience of the former Red Bull driver.

He’s not out of the woods yet in terms of keeping his seat for 2027, but Colapinto appears favourite to remain at Alpine at this stage.

More about the F1 2027 driver market

F1 driver contracts: What is the contract status of every driver on the F1 2026 grid?

F1 2027 driver line-up: Which drivers are already confirmed for the 2027 grid?

Carlos Sainz

While not including Williams in the ‘most improved’ discussion, it’s easy to forget that Carlos Sainz struggled significantly to get to grips with his Williams last year.

Alex Albon very much had the upper hand through all of the first half of last year and, while Sainz grew in the second half of the season – scoring two podiums along the way – it was Albon’s consistency that saw him come out on top.

This time around, the car may be less competitive, but the gap between Sainz and Albon has been stark at times – especially in qualifying.

Where Albon has been semi-regularly exiting in Q1, Sainz has pushed his car to its limits, adapting to the new regulations more easily than his teammate and now looking like a confident team leader in the process.

For context, he’s 12-3 up on Albon in qualifying across grand prix and Sprint formats and 10-5 up in races and Sprints, which is quite the turnaround compared to this time last year.

The former Ferrari driver is at the wrong end of the grid in how Williams has started this season, but that experience at several teams and through several regulatory changes will have helped him be one of the drivers to have hit the ground running in 2026 – even through Williams’ difficult start to the sport’s new era.

Liam Lawson

You would be forgiven for thinking that, after such a brutal demotion from Red Bull after just two races, that Liam Lawson’s career would be hanging by a thread.

Since then, however, the way he has managed to steady the ship and get back on an even keel has been admirable.

Driving unfamiliar machinery back at Racing Bulls, it naturally took time for him to get back up to speed but, once he did, he proved at least a match for Isack Hadjar in the sister car.

Against an extremely highly-rated youngster in Arvid Lindblad, too, Lawson appears to have stepped up in 2026.

Like Colapinto, having a full pre-season at the team with which he’ll be expected to complete the whole season has been a blessing for the New Zealander, and it’s proof that, if drivers learn as much as they can in their surroundings before the year, they should perform better within it (funnily enough.

Despite this being the fourth year in which Lawson has competed in Formula 1, remarkably, it is the first time he has had that consistency before the year started – and it’s showing on track.

He’s scored points in eight out of 11 races so far, with two top-six finishes among them. While he knows that Racing Bulls, as a ‘junior’ team, cannot be his home on the grid forever, Lawson is doing as Pierre Gasly did before him – resetting and performing to an extent that others should eventually take notice, if they haven’t done so already…

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